Thread: Balanced diet?
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Kate Dicey
 
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Default Balanced diet?

Cookie Cutter wrote:
>
> >The poor
> > may have fared better nutritionally by foraging for field greens to
> > add to grain than the rich with abundant supplies of meat and little
> > else.

>
> Why would the rich not have anything other than meat? They would
> have had a house full of servants who would have kept the house
> well-supplied from a kitchen garden.
>

Hieatt and Butler have a nice theory: there are many warnings in
mediaeval and later writings against the dangers of eating salads, and
their argument is that were it not a great habit of former times to eat
such things, there would be no need to warn against them. There are
also plenty of quite elaborate vegetable dishes and dishes containing
vegetables and meat or fish in Roman and mediaeval cookery writings,
dishes that would have been hard for peasants and poor townsfolk to
afford or have the resources and equipment to make (never mind the
time!), so they must have been eaten in middle class and merchant
households, or in the houses of the rich and nobility. Another good
argument in favour of this is that the peasants couldn't write: these
recipes came from a stratum of society where writing things down was a
well established habit, places such as religious establishments and the
houses of great and wealthy.

Kitchen gardens and the still room were often the preserve of the lady
of the house, and were places where not only herbs and medicinal plants
were grown, used and stored, but also places where fruits were bottled
and preserved for use throughout the year. I think it's a great mistake
to assume from the few surviving menus of mediaeval feasts that the
upper classes dines exclusively on meat and white bread, especially when
you look at the methods of preparation of the dishes, and see how many
had vegetables as a part of their make up, one of the expected
accompaniments. If you stop looking at menus and look at household
accounts, you can see that a lot more went into feeding the household
than meat for the master and pottage for his servant. The records of
places like Knole, Hampton Court Palace, and some of the great religious
houses will tell you this. Also take a look at the religious calendar:
there were days (nay, weeks!) when meat was off limits, and fish had to
be eaten, and times when BOTH were forbidden.

In addition, and at the other end of society, meat was eaten by the
peasantry: pigs were kept, and slaughtered and preserved as bacon, for
example. Pigs could be kept close to the house (they didn't mind the
smell!), and made a good waste disposal unit that could be eaten later.
Peasants also had grazing rights for sheep and goats, and while many of
the ewes were kept for wool and reproduction, the ram lambs would mostly
be slaughtered for meat. They may not have eaten anything like as much
meat as the upper and middle classes, but they did get some. More at
some times of the year, and more in some areas, but pigs, goats, and
chickens are all kaleyard keepers. Certainly in England it was part of
a serf's right to have enough time NOT tilling his master's land and
animals to grow food for his family, and tend his own animals.
--
Kate XXXXXX
Lady Catherine, Wardrobe Mistress of the Chocolate Buttons
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